


Annuit Cœptis

by Joelizazel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Destiny crossover for the win, M/M, Multi, Titan and Hunter feelings man, Warlocks, Warlocks doing all of the cool things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:26:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joelizazel/pseuds/Joelizazel
Summary: Steve Rogers died six hundred years ago, and would have happily stayed dead if he had the choice. Unfortunately, a voice echoed to him from the abyss and brought him back to finish the war that he had barely started during his first life.Born again as a Titan of the Vanguard that protects humanity from the Darkness, Steve has to learn how to navigate a new body, new relationships, and a new universe filled with *aliens* bent on *killing him* as many times as they can. He only thought he had loved Star Wars as a kid, living it was turning out to be something else entirely.Overhead a dead god keeps him alive at its whim, and outside a vile force teases him and those closest to him. The last efforts of humanity will hinge on him and those like him, Guardians and Risen in the Light of the Traveler.Annuit Cœptis - (God) favour our undertakings. May the Light protect us from Darkness, may it preserve and keep us safe...and may it not be the shackles that bind us to this life alone.





	Annuit Cœptis

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm going off of what lore I know from playing the game and what I'm piecing together from what I can read online, including many many reddit threads. There's more conspiracy theories about the Traveler than I would have expected.
> 
> Basically this is going to suck, so thank you for reading if you do. (/*3*)/ ~*~*~*~

_“Guardian.”_

 The voice echoed across the limitless darkness. With it brought an awakening of self. HE was here, floating in an abyss. There were others with him, too, small pinpricks in his awareness. Some were like him, some were lesser...and in the vast darkness, great things stirred as well. If he thought about Them too much, They would hear. It was better to be silent, to sleep and forget.

 The voice, however, would not let him do that.

_“Guardian, wake up. Return to the Light.”_

 He didn’t want to listen to the voice, to listen to it and follow its command. Here there was sleep, and peace, even at the loss of self. Here he could exist without pain or fear, both of which he could vaguely remember feeling before he lost consciousness for the last time. Before falling into a freezing depth…

_**Guardian.** I am calling you from the depths of space and time, heed me._

 No.

  _Guardian it is time for you to fight again._

 No. I don’t want to fight anymore, I want to rest.

_Take up your arms again, Steven Rogers. The City has need of you._

_I have need of you._

 And suddenly, he was awake.

 

***

 

 “Good. I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up. Hurry, get used to your body again, we aren’t safe here.”

 Steve is laying half on, half off of a burnt out, rusted vehicle of some sort. There is a strong scent of ozone in the air, and the wind brushing across his body is soft, cold. He’s naked, save for a glove on his left hand which was attached to a large, heavy plate of clear material.

 The voice was coming from somewhere above him, towards the light of the sun. Groggy, a stranger to physical movement, he reaches up with a long unused hand to block out the light. There he makes out the shadow of a shape, which whirs about him talking to itself in distress. There are mentions of ‘hive nearby’ and ‘honestly what did the Light think he was supposed to do about this’.

 Steve was, for all intents and purposes, still dead to the world and to what was happening around him, his body getting colder by the second. He registers that there is ice all around him, chunks of it smoking in the cooling air, pieces of it laying on his new body, jabbing into his back. This wasn’t where he remembered falling. He had been flying over the Bering Strait to Russia, from Alaska, his aircraft hugging the Arctic line as much as it could.

 “I have to get you to safety, somewhere, somehow. Guardian, can you walk?”

 “Hnn...unngh.” Steve manages to croak out, his throat dry and his tongue swollen in this mouth. His teeth are quickly becoming so cold that they can’t even chatter, the movement beyond his cold frozen muscles. Vaguely, he remembered his companion complaining about the cold biting into his metal prosthesis as they flew-

  _A flash of light and then ice, a shock of cold, cold water, a bright light burning as he falls_

 The flash of memory shocks him so badly he sits up, stiff, back so straight it hurts and pulls his muscles. He rolls over, blacking in and out, the new sensation of seeing the sun disorienting him. His back arches painfully as he gasps for breath, his chest burning and his lungs locked up just as his muscles are.

 This new body revolts against him, the nerve endings dying and reforming, his muscles tearing and reforming, his bones turning into dust, help me help me _help me._

  _into the depths! He can’t breathe! He can’t breathe and_

 He manages to hoarsely grunt again, this time in pain and fear. The thing above him takes notice, tries to talk to him but he’s lost in the flashback again, the

  _the darkness is all around him, he’s so cold! He’s screaming in the memory and in real life, hoarse voice dying in the cold and frozen air, in the memory he’s swallowing water and reaching out, trying to unbuckle Bucky from the seat next to him to help him escape_

“Guardian!”

 The shout accompanies a large blast of energy to the back of his neck, which tingles down his spine and brings warmth to his deadened limbs. The glove, connected to his first responder SWAT shield is burnt away, causing the bulletproof material itself to melt.

 Particles cocoon him, taking bits of metal and the plastic of the shield, as well as the leather of the glove, leather from the seats of the vehicle he’s been frozen on top of, and reforms it into a suit of clothes. It’s tight, but comfortable, and most importantly warm. He has full freedom of movement, the glass vizor of the helmet fogging slightly at the edges as he breaths in and out.

 “Sorry, Guardian. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” The voice, the whirring apparatus above him chuckles, embarrassed. “I had forgotten that humans, even Guardians, need protection from the elements. That will be strong enough to sustain you until we get to the Tower. Quickly, though, stand! We must move before the Thrall scent you here. We’re too exposed-”

 Steve stands, obeying the voice. It belongs to a little point of light, around which float metallic, geometric shapes of metal. There’s a faint humming from it, as though it’s mechanical, but no machine he had ever seen could operate as it did. Even in the Golden Era of Humanity, tech still behaved like tech and not like some kind of person. This thing, this-

  _Ghost_

 -was obviously something else. He tracked it in his vision, trying to get his bearings, the Ghost muttering to itself as it surveys their surroundings as well.

 Somewhere behind him a sound echoes in the outskirts of his perception. It’s the sound of a machine, a vehicle of some kind, accompanied by shots and yelling. It’s still a ways off, coming from above the crater he stands in, somewhere up on the ice.

 About to ask where they were, he hears another sound, this time closer. He drops, instinctively trying to make himself as small as he can and to get as much of the cover from the wreckage around him as possible. This was more than a gunshot, but less than a missile or grenade. Some form of small cannon, or mounted ballistic on the vehicle. He ignores the chirruping of the Ghost as he tries to pay attention to what he hears coming towards them.

  _I’ve made a mental connection with you, Guardian, as apparently that's the only way you'll listen to me. Even when I’ve deconstructed my Light and Shell into particles, fusing them to your Suit for travel I’ll still be able to speak with you._ The shape, and its light, both disappear, leaving Steve alone amongst burnt out wreckage, half frozen and half burnt corpses. There’s almost a rain of stuff, which he assumes is its ‘shell’ and ‘light’ that dusts him, before being absorbed by the field clothes it had constructed.

  _I am your Ghost, a construct of the Traveller and a data bank. A key, a programmer, a medic. I will always be here if you need me, as long as you keep me alive. Now, we need to find you a weapon of some sort._

 Instantly, Steve thought about his old shield and baton, his semi-automatic rifle and his thick kukri knife.

  _I don’t think any of those survived the Collapse. Your shield and glove made it purely because of the ice._

 Ice?

  _You’ve been frozen in time, for six hundred years. A recent battle between the Hive and the Fallen over this area dislodged the ice, exposing you to me. I was barely able to re-direct their next attack to an area half a mile away from you, so your remains would be intact. It wasn’t easy, and alerted them that I was here. We have to move, and soon._

 His legs didn’t want to work right, but he did as best he could. He was stepping over bodies, civilians and military alike. They were mostly gone, only scraps of clothing and in some cases, flesh all covered in ice or mud. He didn’t understand how they had gotten there, when he had fallen-

  _The ice cap you were frozen in was moved when part of the moon was dislodged by the Hive’s invasion. Mixed with uncontrolled weather patterns, earthquakes, and a hurricane thirty years ago you were washed up and over a refugee camp, then refrozen. It was a great loss of life, but you’re one of the Risen. You don’t have to worry about death such as that with me around._

That hardly seemed fair. Why, when he was resurrected, couldn’t the rest of the dead be so as well? An image of his best friend flashed in his mind, and the Ghost made a mental shrug, something a little cube of metal and light should not have been able to do.

  _Hey. Be polite! I only act as the Traveler willed me to in its last breath. I was sent with a direct blueprint of your DNA and its signature, sent to find what remains I could find to bring you back. He called you back personally. Did you not hear the Voice, echoing to you into Death?_

 Steve nods, then felt foolish. If it could read his thoughts, why should he bother physical movement or even spoken word? Familiarity, maybe. “Yes.”

  _The Traveler sacrificed itself to save the human race from the Darkness and its agents. The Collapse, and the shockwave of the Traveler expending all of its Light caused amazing and horrific change. Terrific power was unleashed, horrific things happened after your death. You have a lot of catching up to do._ It paused, before continuing.

  _There’s some good surprises waiting for you too._

 “Good. It better be worth traipsing through all of these bodies in the middle of the Russian what have you.” He wasn’t meaning to be caustic, but it dripped out acidic and tasting bitter on his tongue. He had been asleep, at peace, and now he was alive again and dealing with some battle he didn’t know anything about.

 There was an echo of the memory of the voice who called him back.

  ** _It’s time for you to fight again...I have need of you._**

  _You’ll like them._ His ghost reassured him, giving him the distinct impression of a mental pat on the head. Shrugging noncommittally he surveys the area around him looking for a way out of his crater. There was a crack ahead of them, making a valley that slowly built its way up to the top of the ice. The incline was slippery, but the field-made boots were able to barely traverse the ice with little slipping, though he cursed on his way up quite a bit.

 “You know, back in the day I would have been taken off of detail for a voice talking to me in my head.” Steve tried to joke, breathing heavy around all of the exertion he was not used to. But, what could you say, he’d been dead for a few centuries apparently. Frozen in ice for six hundred years.

  _True, but now most soldiers have voices in their heads._

 “Other Ghosts?”

  _Yes. Though, some are memories. The death and rebirth of a Risen isn’t perfect...sometimes, you come back different. The Thanatonauts of the Warlock Order are prime examples of this. They die to get glimpses of the Beyond, to see the Future._

 “Death wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. I don’t know why-” he paused to duck behind some cover, the vehicles behind him getting closer. A weird trick of the new helmet, or some alteration that had happened to his awareness, he was distantly conscious of the impending force behind him. “-they’d bother.”

  _In this war we need all of the insight we can get, old weapons from the Golden Era. Old secrets. Humanity has been almost completely destroyed by the Darkness. Sometimes you have to do grand things and great sacrifices to keep your whole species alive._

 “So, voices then?”

  _Yes. Voices upon voices echoing as far back as human genetic memory allows. Demons and angels abound._

 Steve fell silent, trying to concentrate on his field training from the military. He hadn’t fought in many battles, mostly small scale emergency stuff for the US military. A lot of natural disasters, some insurrections of rebellion against allied governments. Their training covered situations somewhat similar to this one- being dropped in enemy territory with little to no supplies, the world around him inimical to his very life. He was being chased by something, either the Fallen or the Hive (whatever those might be) the Ghost had mentioned. Which, speaking of-

 “Do you have a name? If I’m not the only person with a voice, I want it to have a name. That way, I don’t get you all mixed up.”

  _Well, no. I don’t have a name. My consciousness and personality are false, after all. I am a brilliant bit of programming housed in a shell, nothing more or less. I’m not even as complex as the Exo, who have true souls._

 “You still need a name, especially if you have a sense of self of any sort. Your programming allows you some personality, so I’ll call you...Sam. My eyes in the sky, from back in the day.” Memories of his friend, who wasn’t in his unit but was a pararescue EMT, surfaced slowly in his mind. They had gone through basic together, had worked some rescue missions, got along famously with each other.

  _I like the colour of his uniform. We could find me a shell, like those colours…_

 “See? You have personality and consciousness of your own, then don’t you Sam? If you can ‘like’ something and want to choose your appearance.” A loud explosion sounds behind them, larger and closer than the last, and he got a sense of worry at the back of his mind, where the ‘voice’ of Sam the Ghost came from. “And you can apparently feel fear.”

  _The Hive and Fallen are cruel to what they find...the Hive so they can feed on light. Especially to fuel their dark sorceries and to feed their dark Gods. The Fallen for petty greed, generally, though this is also linked to their survival as a broken race. Either way they would devour and destroy me, and kill you. We need to hurry and find you a transport of some kind. I’m still too close to enemy territory to try and send out a signal for a pick up, they would be upon us in seconds._

 Finding this reasonable, Steve continues on in silence. His stamina builds as he uses his new body, getting used to the feel of his muscles under the tight armored suit. He’s now less tired, feeling less of a burn in his muscles, his bones not aching as they had after his birth. Sam informs him that he had made...alterations...to his human form in the rebirthing process, which was one reason it was so hard for his body to get used to itself.

_There’s training that I programmed into your new muscles. New muscle memories to augment your old training. This is Titan training, the use of Light to create weapons and strengthen your attacks, some upgrades to the basic human DNA that will make you faster, stronger, hardier than you were before. Not saying that you weren’t a stunning example of a human male in the Before, of course._

 Steve chuckles. “Thank you.”

_You’re welcome._

 The terrain evens out, and he registers that this is Eastern Russia, the Steppe lands. He truly had floated off course from where his ship had gone down, and the iceflows had reclaimed a lot of the surrounding area.

  _Mini ice age caused by nuclear fallout, there was no one left to upkeep the reactors. Most of the robotic help, without upkeep themselves, were unable to do so themselves after a while. It lasted a few hundred years, blocking out most of the sun for this part of the globe until we were able to clear it up. Cost us some resources, a few Guardians were lost to us. Their ghosts were drained of light...it was a sad thing._

 “Sounds like it. What about the wildlife in the area? How have the ecosystems survived?”

  _Most animal species are extinct. The hardiest have survived. There is an Ark, waiting someday for us to bring back the old species of Earth. It’s kept more for the hope of a time where we can populate this world and our old colonies in the system...something to look forward to if we ever find peace again._

 Ahead of them is a small dot on the horizon, a blip amongst a sea of brush and chunks of ice, stone and twisted bits of rusted out metal. _There, head towards that. We might get lucky._

 They come upon a shed, and some kind of data link pings through his Ghost, who has gotten increasingly more excited the closer Steve took them towards it. _A sparrow link. If there’s any still active inside, that might just be our way out of here and closer to the City. Let’s look shall we?_

 With a small burst of light, it appears in Steve’s upraised palm, floating closer to the station and through the doorway. Following, Steve makes out a basic computer system and a few cases, all marked “Sparrow, S-10”. There were some designs on the side as well, operating manuals surely, which had faded and peeled into oblivion.

 “This should do it. I’m activating your link to the Sparrow network on Earth.” Beams of light, which Steve could see were made up of symbols and variations in colour begin to shoot out of the central ‘eye’ of the Ghost.

 “We’re in luck. The City tries to keep stations like this outfitted in case of emergency, they’ve left a base class Sparrow here for use in emergencies.” There’s an explosion, as well as a whooping noise of many voices, all at once, sounding a warning cry. “No weapons left though, but we’ve got some perfect timing. Hop on!”

 There’s an unfolding in front of him as one of the boxes burst apart, then reformed itself into a hovering dirt bike looking contraption. It was vaguely familiar, the shape of it and how it hovered in air. Steve finally realises what it reminds him of. Some painful memories, bittersweet, a night of binge watching a popular movie series and popcorn with mini Reese’s peanut butter cups mixed in, a large soda and a kiss afterward…

 Chuckling, feeling a bit hysterical at the whole of the ordeal, Steve swung a leg over.

 “What’s so funny?” asks Sam, the Ghost (but not the ghost of Sam, Steve was suddenly feeling like he was cracking a bit at the edges) as it floated about his head, its pieces spinning and whirring about its eye. “Hurry, or you’re going to die and I could die with you!”

 “It’s like the hoverbikes from Star Wars.” Steve burst into full scale laughter, his hands going automatically to the handle bars and starting the engine. “And I’m being tailed by aliens. Aliens.”

 “Yes.” Sam burst into the particle rain and settled into his suit. I fail to see why that’s so funny.

 “I’m going insane is all. Don’t worry about it, Sam.”

  _Oh. Okay then. I’m uploading the directions to the City into your helmet._ Sure enough, in the top left corner of his vision, a small circle appeared. There were some vague red marks behind him, as well as a white arrow and a line leading off to the South of where he was currently positioned. The red marks corresponded towards his new ‘awareness’ of the enemies he’s felt behind them the whole time. Hurry!

 Steve kicks off, hooking his legs back on the supports and revs the engine, shooting off with a whoop. Hopefully, towards safety, and something to eat. Being dead for six centuries could make a body ravenous.

 

 ***

 

 

The journey to the City was anything but comfortable, though he did see some amazing sights on the way. None of which were food.

 Before his death, he remembered the mad rush to the colony ships, the escape towards some form of safety outside of our solar system. He didn’t remember exactly why, and didn’t remember engaging the hostile force that had been headed towards humanity’s fragile empire.

 He was never engaged by the enemies behind him. Once he and Sam reached a certain point, and they had fallen off, turning back around to scavenge the blasted ice lands to the northeast of where he was headed. _This area is held by a different House of Fallen, they won’t pursue us...but others might._

 The City itself was surrounded by massive walls, topped with towers every half a mile or so. Only two of these blazed with light, one with flashes that Sam had explained were battles raging in what he called the Crucible. A training ground of some sort, for elite Guardians.

 The Second was the Guardians Tower, Sam explained, and was the one they were headed for.

 “How do we get in?” Steve asked, after cycling along a long line of the wall, looking for a gate. “There’s no doors.”

  _I’ve sent a data burst to the Tower. There will be a transport ship available for us ahead. Be ready to meet your fellow Guardians, Steve. It’s not often a new one joins the ranks. I’ve been looking for you for a long time._

 “Well, we’ll see if I’m glad of that or not.”

  _You should be, there’s a surprise waiting for you._

 Finally arriving to the pick up point, Steve has a moment of a freefall when the Sparrow disappears into a flutter of light and particles, which then collapse upon themselves into a small shape that becomes part of his suit. _Old Golden Era tech. I’m able to collapse physical objects into base components and data and store them for you, up to a certain amount. It makes traveling light but prepared a reality._

 Steve just shrugs and tries to pretend to not be impressed. Sam knows otherwise.

 The transport ship picked him up, in a vaguely ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ way. He was greeted upon rematerialising inside of it by an attractive redheaded woman roughly his age, a ghost with a dark red shell complementing the shock of her hair.

 “Hey, newbie. I’m Natasha, Sunsinger Warlock Vanguard rank 10. Welcome to the last place humanity can comfortably rest.” She held a hand up in greeting then winked as the ship took off from the transmat zone. “From the look of your fieldweave, you’re a Titan.”

 “That’s what I’m told.”

 “Titans are cool. A great set of abilities, I always try to have at least two on any fireteam I go out on. Glass cannon warlock and all of that.” She shrugs before turning her attention back to piloting the craft, her Ghost and Sam floating around each other, a faint beam of light going back and forth as they shared data. “You can take that helmet off if you want, let’s see what kind of new meat our great benefactor dug up for us.”

 Steve, seated on the uncomfortable bench behind her, reaches up to fumble with his helmet. “I’m Steve, previously with the United States Army. And, well, I would but I don’t know how to take it off exactly.”

 “Ah, okay newbie. I’ll help you out when we land. I’ve had a lot of practice taking off armor for strapping young men.” Her voice betrayed the smile that was surely curved on her face, and Steve blushes, thankful for the helmet’s protection.

 They crest the large wall that separates the rest of the world from the human populace, flying around other aircraft and even a couple of people. He tried to not crowd the window behind her to soak it all in. It was slightly cloudy, a rainstorm happening in the distance through which he could make out the large sphere of the Traveler. Underneath the clouds and the Traveler stretched a city full of lit buildings, many of which were relics from his last stint on the planet.

 Steve barely remembered what it was like in his life before, besides little bits and pieces of memory (voices, like his Sam told him, echoes of voices). As the clouds part a bit in the (what he’s assuming is simulated) storm, the sight of the damaged Traveler came into view. It shocked and appalled him.

 The wounds to the once smooth white surface were extensive, especially to its underside. No one had ever been able to figure out if the Traveler, a large mechanical white sphere, was a spacecraft that held the entity inside or if it in itself was the entity. Whichever it was, it hadn’t been spared by the battle with the Darkness before the Collapse. Large gouges were taken out of it, as well as huge burns and mars all along its cracked surface.

 “What happened to it?” he asks Natasha, voice breaking. “Sam mentioned the Collapse and that it had expended its Light, but I never assumed anything like this.”

 “Sam?"

 "My Ghost."

 "Ohh. You're the first Guardian I've seen that named his Ghost. As for the Traveler, no one knows, really. There are rumors that abound in darker corners of the City that say the last Warmind attempted to keep it from fleeing as the Darkness approached us. The popular story is that it sacrificed itself when it came back to save us from destruction. I have memories of the Collapse itself, when my family tried to flee to the colony ships.”

 “It was a dark time. Terrifying.” she shivers here, the memories dancing across her skin, forming goosebumps. “No one knew what was happening, what was coming. Rasputin was sounding the alarm, the systems were going down and no one understood our enemy. I honestly can’t remember if the Traveler was here with us, or if it had left and come back- my memories say I was about seven years old when the Collapse happen. I vividly remember the ballerina doll my mother had given me for that birthday, so I’m assuming that was my age.

 Memories as a Guardian can be messy. I question them, constantly. I’ve been dead and brought back by my Ghost so often, all of my lives tend to mix together and make a mess. Such is being a warlock of my caliber. I even played around with being a Thanatonaut for a while, which didn’t help anything. What I do remember well is seeing the force of the Light, though. It blinded us, for what felt like a lifetime. That’s when the colony ship crashed and we all died.” She finished with a laugh. "It wasn't that great of an experience."

 “But you’re a Guardian and an adult now? How did that happen?”

 “I was found by my Ghost and trained in the Warlock Order, after some issues with the Hunters. They were my first choice. I’ve been fighting with and for the Vanguard for sixteen years now. As a kid, I was taken in by an orphanage in the City for lost children, the only child with a Ghost of course. Then my Light grew enough that I had to join the young adults in training, then I had to go even farther...I’m special, apparently. My family had a history of being weird in the Old World, I guess it carried over.”

 “That’s cool. Weird, but cool.” Steve agrees, wondering what his family had been like. None of those memories had resurfaced yet, and he hoped they would.

 “True. And, we’re landing. Get ready, Steve the newbie Titan. The Speaker will want to speak at you, which is always a blast. He has a great sense of humour and he’s just full of knowledge...which he tends to keep tight to his chest, if he can.”

 Steve nods, fiddling with his fingers nervously. New orders, it sounded like, new instructions for this battle. He wasn’t very excited.

 “Don’t worry, Steve.” Sam said as he did his particle rain. _Once we get this out of the way, you’ll be free to explore for a while and get used to your new life. It’ll be okay._

Steve wasn’t so sure about that, but who could argue with the voice in your head?


End file.
